PROVERBS 1: WE’RE STILL STANDING!
The test for anything at all is the test of time and the test of adverse conditions. So, I’m continually proud of my girls and my husband. Instead of looking in and down, they’re looking out and up, and their snippets of wisdom still make me well up inside:
Akila’s Facebook Post 1/8/15: “6 years ago today, we arrived in St Vincent (Caribbean) after a 2-week sea voyage from Cork (Ireland). Then the news came. I was woken at 4am and told that Mike had gone to Heaven. My friends surrounded me with love and care, but there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. I choose to seize moments, create memories & celebrate life… “One dance, one look, one kiss… That’s all we get, Albert.” – Hitch – the last movie Mike watched before going to bed, falling asleep, and entering Eternity.
Photo by Laura Knight
Laura’s Facebook Post 1/8/15: Six years ago today I said goodnight to my “Bruskie”. That was the last time I ever saw him. Many sunsets have gone by since then and many days have been a challenge. However, I thank God for His goodness and faithfulness; for giving me strength when I needed it most!!! But most of all, I thank God for a bl**dy good big brother who blessed me with such wonderful memories. Good morning August 1st, I’m still standing!
If you have been following my Breadcrumbs over the past 2 weeks, you will have noticed how the Book of Job established for us the sovereign rule of our Lord God Almighty – regardless of our personal experiences here on earth. The Book of Psalms gave us many things to thank our Creator God for. Now, the Book of Proverbs helps us to build on these two perspectives by giving us understanding for the sort of wisdom found in our Maker’s Guidebook for LIFE. And here, I can’t help being proud of my son who, looking back, exemplified this 3000-year-old Proverb. If anyone is to meet their Maker, it’s worth measuring this Proverb against the reality of your worldview, lifestyle, and everyday behaviour.
Today’s chapter written three millenniums ago, has been miraculously protected in the region with the greatest turmoil throughout 
history, then translated into every language on earth. None of us can say that our Maker didn’t help us live up to “the manufacturer’s expectations” without a User Guide for functioning correctly. Just the first 3 sentences are enough to cover everything we would personally need – particularly an ability for discerning right/wrong good/bad in the millions of sayings of understanding now on the internet [v2]; or that our societies would need for wise behaviour [v3]; and that our world needs for choosing the best path in right-ness, justice, and equity. [v3]
Yet even with our Maker’s Manual, one of the growing forms of family breakdown in the decades since our son passed away – and this particularly in the affluent West – is with adult children rejecting their parents. Often through separation and exile even when living within a mile of each other, this breakdown can go on for years. I hope to write a book called Holograms, based on this ever-growing and extremely detrimental trend. But the eternal wisdom in our Maker’s Handbook for LIFE is clear….
“Beni (my son), hear the musar Avicha (the instruction or discipline, educating on moral conduct, how one should act in an appropriate manner from your human father), and forsake not the Torat Immecha (Godly, righteous, teaching, law, instructions called to mind from your Mother). For they shall be a garland of chen (favour, grace, charm, blessing) upon your rosh (head), and a chain (gold medallion, royal chain) about your neck.” [v8-9]
Our modern world questions every authority, and some rightly so. Yet God’s children – those He calls His “son” (the word ‘son’ is ‘child’ both masculine and feminine because it’s related to full inheritance, first-right heir, in His Kingdom) – should operate in His likeness i.e. what He would want from a successfully functioning human (mortal male/female) image of Himself.[a] Clearly, this includes hearing and not forsaking our parent’s wisdom. If accepted, the Creator God sees it invisibly adorning our head (crowning our thoughts) and hanging like a royal chain/medal over our heart. Therefore, regardless of what we may think of our parents, or how their behaviour may annoy us, they’re given the highest authority in the Universe, and this in writing, allowing them to speak and impart their wisdom. While all-out rejection and significant periods of enforced separation can’t be a method for curbing or disciplining them.
Going back to where the world’s longest running drama first began, Eve at the dawn of humanity wanted knowledge. Enticed by a form of alternative reasoning that conflicted with Father God’s specific word, she reached out for ‘wisdom’ but instead, 
fell into humanity’s first and greatest downfall: knowing evil as well as good. We all now live a full lifetime personally experiencing (feeling the pain of) the difference between them both. The one thing that our Maker wanted from His images was the first and greatest commandment: to express love before Him.[b] This meant trusting in His explicit wisdom[c] then, based on the knowledge He had imparted, choosing to respect it by crowning the minds and hearts with it (knowledge applied correctly) for as long as we’re still standing.
Put simply, we can’t gain wisdom in any field at all without expecting that this will require lifestyle changes from us – whether that is to give up our time to study the topic to gain that ‘wisdom’ in the first place; or, once known, this knowledge affecting our choices in some way – changing our attitude/behaviour while obliged to what we now know. Likewise, just as a good father would instruct a child clearly, then discipline his child when she/he deliberately won’t heed the wisdom, Father God only disciples the ones He loves and accepts as “sons”.[d] If true, then two things are important: (i) someone deliberately devoid of Godly wisdom yet seemingly getting away with it in this life, are neither accepted as a “son” nor loved by their Maker; and (ii) there is never an age where any one of us standing on our own two feet will be above the need for wisdom, and acquiring knowledge that is then applied correctly.
Those who choose to listen to our Creator’s Guidebook for LIFE could certainly die at any time – just as 100% of all humans will die at some point – but while they live, they’ll live in safety and be completely at ease without the terror of evil. [v33] “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”[f] But if it’s possible for your in-built clock – that time-frame that’s given to you as part of your DNA blueprint story of YOU when you were knitted together in your mother’s womb[e] – to tick to a stop while you’re young, healthy, and asleep in your own bed, just as our son had been on August 1st 2009, then there’s really nowhere on the planet that you can escape to, where you can avoid coming face-to-face with your Maker.
If you go to heaven, you’ll meet your Maker there. If you make your bed in the depths, He’s there too. If you take up your residence in the remotest part of the sea, or say that the darkness will cover you and the light around you will turn to night, even there your Maker sees you because darkness and light are the same to Him.[g] 100% of every created human image of God will one day meet our Maker. Now if that strikes a note of concern in you, celebrate! That’s the reshit da’as: the beginning of wisdom! You’re only job between now and then, is to apply that knowledge correctly for as long as you’re still standing…
CLICK to return to today’s “Daily Breadcrumbs”
[a] Genesis 1:26-28
[b] Deuteronomy 6:5
[c] Genesis 2:16-17
[d] Job 5:17; Hebrews 12:6
[e] Psalm 139:13-16
[f] Jeremiah 29:11
[g] Psalm 139:7-12
Lovely well chosen words Kathy, I enjoyed reading every one of them and hope I’ve gained eternally by letting them settle into my soul. Thank you.